


Remove the Cause, not the Symptom

by egocentrifuge



Category: Mythical Entertainment, Rhett & Link
Genre: Crossdressing, F/M, Happy Ending, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Transphobia, Panties, Slow Burn, i feel like i should start tagging for Supportive Rhett, people talking about transness without the vocabulary for it, sorta kinda (not link), trans!Link
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 06:15:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18911215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egocentrifuge/pseuds/egocentrifuge
Summary: So Rhett wears women’s underwear. That’s just something Link knows about him now, the same as he knows Rhett’s self-conscious about his size and was too scared of heights to take the top bunk when they lived in the dorms. Difference is, where Link can make fun of Rhett for those last two things, he's… not sure how to handle the first one. Sophomore year they had gone to a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and cried laughing at the older townies throwing toast and snapping gloves, and late that night Link had had a quiet crisis in the shower long after the water’d gone cold.Link can’t imagine the mental fortitude required to go out and buy a pair of women’s underwear, would never be able to find the strength in him (unless, well, it was a dare). But taking a pair out of your roommate’s drawer and shimmying into them while he’s out of the apartment? That, Link can just about manage.





	Remove the Cause, not the Symptom

**Author's Note:**

> it's been one week (cue the music) since I started hrt. witness me.

Link does their laundry, primarily because he can’t stand to see Rhett’s dirty clothes lying around. It’d been fine that Rhett was disorganized and slob-adjacent when they’d been kids, i.e. when they didn’t live together, but after a year in a dorm and two in an apartment they’ve both had to make concessions. Rhett has conceded to give Link total control of the dresser and closet, and to actually put his clothes - yes,  _all_  clothes, Rhett, if you want to wear those shorts again you can damn well dig them out - in the dirty clothes hamper immediately upon taking them off. Link has conceded to do their collective laundry, and to keep his nagging down to an absolute minimum.

(Gregg insisted, a few weeks ago, that they’re already acting like the boring parts of a married couple, they may as well start fucking. Link had dumped half a shaker of salt into the coffee pot and let Gregg choke on it.)

Not a lot of Rhett’s clothes haven’t been around for years, though there’s some new jeans to make up for how Rhett just keeps  _growing_ , so Link knows when their roommates try to sneak in their dirty laundry in the hopes that Link won’t notice. Maybe if he’d found these in the hamper, he’d of walked out of his and Rhett’s shared room and put them on a lamp or something. But, no: there, tucked in Rhett’s underwear and sock drawer, is…

Well. It’s panties. 

A pair of them, blush colored and unremarkable except for the fact that they shouldn’t be in Rhett’s drawer. He’s not - no, Rhett hasn’t dated anyone since his last girlfriend moved away, and Link would  _know_ if Rhett had had anyone over in a more casual capacity. Why, then, is there a pair of girl’s underwear tucked under a neatly folded stack of boxers?

With the air of someone who’s just come across a cuss word while reading out loud in class and doesn’t know whether they’ll get in trouble for saying it, Link refolds the panties and puts them with the few threadbare tighty-whities Rhett never wears but hasn’t bothered to get rid of. The boxer briefs get stacked on top of them, then the boxers come on top.

Satisfied with the organization, Link pushes the strange discovery out of his mind and moves on to matching socks. When Rhett gets back from the gym, the only snipe he gets sent his way is a reminder that Link ain’t turning his damn socks right-side out for him.

–

Since they’ve lived together, Link can count the amount of times Rhett’s voluntarily done his own laundry on one hand. Once he’d had to do it because they’d been fighting and Link had picked Rhett’s clothes out of the hamper and put them on Rhett’s bed, and though the next weekend Link hadn’t been mad anymore he’d resolutely done the same on principle and so on and so forth until Rhett’d run out of clean underwear three weeks in. Rhett hasn’t stopped calling Link  _petty_ since then (which is rich, coming from the guy who’d sat on Link for two hours when they were kids because Link had called Rhett’s eyebrows  _overgrown caterpillars)._

Once Rhett had gotten thrown up on at a party and come home and shoved those clothes in the washer on their own. Once, as far as Link can guess, Rhett had messed up his sheets and done all the laundry to throw Link off the trail. Link kind of thinks Rhett may have shit the bed in a more literal sense than the phrase normally denotes, but some things you don’t mock a man for. Anyways, it’d been an isolated experience. And they haven’t gone back to that restaurant since.

The point is: Rhett’s done his own laundry for four weeks straight, now, and Link’d gone from pleasantly surprised to disgruntled two weeks ago. Link’s a creature of habit, and his routine has been disrupted, and he wants to freaking know  _why_. It’s been working for three years, so what changed? Link knows he didn’t shrink anything, or turn all Rhett’s white shirts pink, or starch Rhett’s underthings - who even uses starch? Last time Link had washed Rhett’s clothes they’d all been neat and folded and organized -

Link pauses in the middle of viciously folding his towel. Stands up from their cheap Wal-Mart rug (vacuummed every Thursday evening) and, after a brief moment of wrestling with his conscience, tugs Rhett’s top drawer open.

It’s a mess, for one, Link thinks critically. Rhett’s never appreciated the zen folding one’s underwear can achieve. A cursory glance neither confirms nor denies Link’s suspicions, which means he either has to give up or give in and have a rummage.

Link’s elbow-deep in drawers by the time he’s processed the decision and the impact it stands to have on their relationship. He’s gotta look Rhett in the eye whenever he gets home from the gym with the knowledge that he’s gone through Rhett’s underwear like a freak.

But there’s the dusty pink panties, and a new sky blue pair with little scalloped edges in white lace, and, gosh, these purple ones are soft, aren’t they?

It’s comforting, to bring order to the chaos. Link folds and organizes Rhett’s underwear, but instead of tucking the four pairs of panties he finds (the fourth consisting mostly of black lace) down at the bottom with the underwear Rhett doesn’t wear (a legitimate decision, last time, based on the scale of most fabric to least fabric), Link puts them carefully on top (with the new organization of most to least used, based solely on conjecture).

Shit. Well. Rhett was going to know Link knew, now, though what Link knows he’s - not sure. Maybe Rhett will tell him, once he sees that Link knows whatever it is Rhett doesn’t want him to know.

By the time Rhett gets home, though, Link and Gregg are sloshed in the living room watching Sunday night wrestling, and any Big Discussion they could have had is undermined by a lot of shouting and shoving and just generally being dorks.

Link doesn’t remember that there’d been anything to talk about until he goes to do laundry a week later and a shockingly red pair of panties dyes all their sweatsocks a faint pink.

–

So Rhett wears women’s underwear. That’s just something Link knows about him now, the same as he knows Rhett’s never not hungry and is self-conscious about his size and was too scared of heights to take the top bunk when they lived in the dorms. Difference is, where Link can make fun of Rhett for those last two things, he's… not sure how to handle the first one. Sophomore year they had gone to a showing of the  _Rocky Horror Picture Show_  and cried laughing at the older townies throwing toast and snapping gloves, and late that night Link had had a quiet crisis in the shower long after the water’d gone cold.

He’d never seen a man dress like a woman and feel confident about it, feel sexy, be  _portrayed_  as sexy as he slept with both parts of a soon to be married couple. Link’d never imagined what he might look like in that same kinda lingerie and heels and lipstick. He’d never realized that he  _wanted_ that.

But then he’d known, and he’d spent the rest of that year coming to terms with that, and it’d been… okay. Slightly maddening, because every time he walked into the drugstore Link’s brain had shouted at him to buy a tube of red lipstick, it was just that simple, just  _go over and pick one up -_

Somehow, Link’s kept the impulses under control. Managed to masquerade as a totally normal dude who doesn’t get a wave of almost debilitating  _want_ every time he passes mannequins modeling pretty dresses.

Apparently, Rhett had not managed the same feat. And really, Link should be making fun of him, but every time Link so much as remembers that Rhett has a steadily increasing rotation of panties, his ribs threaten to cave in as his chest goes freaking  _tight_.

Link can’t imagine the mental fortitude required to go out and buy a pair of women’s underwear, couldn’t find the strength in him unless it was a dare. But taking a pair out of your roommate’s drawer and shimmying into them while he’s out of the apartment? That, Link can just about manage.

It still takes him three days to work up the courage, by which point the ones Link coveted - the black lacy pair and the firetruck red ones that are open in the back - are in the hamper. Link’s not so far gone that he’ll stoop to putting on Rhett’s dirty laundry, so after dithering around for half an hour Link finally settles on the hypnotically soft purple pair.

Forcing himself to take his shorts off takes a while, and Link loses another five minutes debating whether he should leave his own boxers on for propriety’s sake. He ends up trying it, but even before Link gets the underwear all the way up he realizes it’s not going to work.

Something delicate snaps inside Link; even as his boxers land in a heap on the other side of the room he’s pulling the panties up his thighs in a rush.

Link’s wearing a long shirt, and besides that, he has his back to the mirror, so for a long, long moment all he has to go on is feel. It's… nice. Just as soft as he thought. Kind of constricting, but it feels better when he arranges his cock and balls more neatly. Touching the shape of his junk through the fabric is strange and surreal, but Link snatches his hand away before he can do something as sick as stroke himself through Rhett’s underwear.

Shit,  _fuck._  Okay. Alright, he can do this. All he had to do was turn around - okay, easy. Now lift his shirt up -

The first thing Link sees is purple - the shape of his cock so clear to see - then black - unruly pubes and the soft, dark hair on his thighs and belly- and then instinct has him looking up to meet his own eyes.

Link’s pale, wide-eyed. Close to tears, apparently, though Link hadn’t realized that until he’d seen himself. He feels kind of woozy. Is he breathing? Oh - he’s gonna pass out.

He doesn’t faint, but he comes close to it in the two tottering steps it takes to sit on the edge of his bed, put his head between his knees. Like this, Link almost can’t tell that he’s crying; the tears fall straight outta his eyes and onto the rug, bypassing his cheeks entirely. Life hack! He wonders if this’d keep mascara from running, then aches for the fact that he can’t wear mascara, then laughs wetly at the fresh wave of panic.

Fuck. Shit.

Okay.

–

It’s not a laundry day, but by the time Rhett gets out of class Link’s dry-eyed and calm in a sea of folded clothes and inside-out socks, the basket half-empty in front of him. Completing tasks makes Link feel better, and besides, he had to wash Rhett’s panties before Rhett realized they were in the dirty laundry.

Link hadn’t anticipated that breaking his routine would be in any way remarkable to Rhett, though -  he simply hadn’t prepared an excuse because he hadn’t expected to be called on it.

But: “Why are you doing laundry on a Tuesday?” Rhett asks as he toes off his shoes, then, as Link raises his eyes to look at him: “Dude, you okay?”

Out of all the questions you can ask someone, Link’s pretty sure it’s the worst. He  _was_ okay, actually, right until Rhett asked him that. And now, look at him, he’s going to cry again.

“Fine,” Link chokes out, because he  _has_ to try, and he manages a smile before ducking his head again. There’s a fifty/fifty chance of it working and Rhett leaving Link to whatever the hell’s going on with him, but then Link makes the mistake of reaching into the basket again and his hand touches lace.

Before Link can process what he’s doing, he’s on his feet and whipping the pair of panties at Rhett’s face. They fall short, because underwear aren’t naturally aerodynamic, but Rhett still looks as if he’s been slapped.

“This is  _your freaking fault,”_  Link snarls, scrubbing the back of his wrist under his nose. “I-I, I had it under - control, and you - ”

He kicks the basket over, which makes him feel better, then tosses the pile of socks across the room, which just kind of depresses him. Those socks had been ready to be matched.

“Link,” Rhett says. It’s not normally how he says Link’s name when he’s throwing a tantrum. It’s soft, quiet - like he’s just admitted to Link that he killed Tim for eating his last Big Mac again and is asking for help hiding the body. Link has to rub away his furious tears to make out Rhett’s expression, but he looks… not great. Kind of like Link did when he looked in the mirror earlier, in fact.

Link wants to punch him, but he also kind of wants to be held, and most of all he wants things to go back to the way they were before they watched that  _fucking_  movie.

In lieu of getting what he wants, Link sits down on his bed and puts his head in his hands.

“I tried a pair on,” Link tells his palms. “I shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have bought any. Shouldn’t have let me  _see,_  man.”

There’s a sound that might be Rhett sitting down on his own bed, then a sound that’s definitely Rhett sniffling and wiping his face, composing himself so that his voice is something more normal than Link’s whine when he says, “Like I did it on purpose. You’re always going through my drawers - ”

Link lifts his head to glare. Rhett’s hugging his knees on his own bed, but his cheeks are dry and jaw’s jutted out mulishly. “Then you should have done your own damn laundry - ”

“I  _did,“_ Rhett snaps, throwing up his hands. “I did, and you still went through them, what did you want me to do?”

“Be normal! Just freaking -” Link’s voice cracks; he pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut as his forehead throbs. “Just let me be normal.”

Link can’t see Rhett’s face, but he can imagine it: Red, angry, self-righteous.

“They’re just clothes,” Rhett says, words bitten off, furious. “It’s just - it’s fabric, it’s not like I want to be a woman, I just like how they feel.” Link doesn’t say anything, can’t, and Rhett interprets the silence as disagreement and goes on. “I paid for them with my own fucking money, it’s - it’s no one else’s business,  _including_  you, Neal, what I want to fucking wear.”

Rhett’s rusty boxspring - their first side-of-the-road “purchase” back when they were happy, back before they knew any better - creaks as, presumably, Rhett stands up. Link doesn’t know where he’s going, what he’s going to do; Link hardly flinches when Rhett’s big stupid hands fist in Link’s shirt and drag him upright. He opens his eyes, though, meets Rhett’s bug-eyed glare.

“I do,” Link rasps, because he’s pretty sure he’s going to get punched no matter how this conversation goes and he might as well get this off his chest. Rhett’s frown deepens as he tries to apply this to what he’s said, fails. He shakes Link a little.

“Say what you fucking mean.”

Link rolls his head back to stare at the popcorn ceiling.

“I - I want. To be a woman.”

The only sounds in the room for a long moment are Rhett’s harsh breaths, Link’s occasional hiccups. He clears his throat and goes on.

“Since we were kids. Dreamed about - being a wife, wearing big skirts and growing my hair long, having babies. Thought I was g-gay or something, but I like girls fine enough.” Link can’t stop talking now that he’s started, though the tears are coming more thickly and making it harder to sound anything close to sane. “I liked Trinity the best, sh-she asked to put makeup on me, oh - oh, when I saw - ” Link has to tilt his head forward or risk drowning in his own snot; both he and Rhett flinch when his head comes to rest on Rhett’s chest.

“I-I don’t want to be like this, brother. I tried - god, I was doing okay, but - ”

It’s only Rhett keeping Link upright, so when he lets go of Link’s shirt Link nearly crumples back onto his bed. But Rhett’s arm is coming around Link’s waist, then, crushing him against Rhett in a hug tighter than anything they’ve shared before. Link feels Rhett’s chin tuck against the top of his head and cries all the harder.

“I’m sorry,” Link realizes Rhett’s mumbling, voice vibrating through both their chests. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Over and over, hand rubbing stiltedly against Link’s back, still holding Link up with one wiry arm around his waist.

Link’s always liked his waist. It’s narrow, and because it follows his ribs, Link almost feels like it curves. His hips - not so much, but oh well. Rhett would never turn his socks right-side out, they could never unwatch that movie, and Link would never see what he wanted in the mirror. Such was the way of the world.

After a while they sit down on Link’s bed because he’s shaking too hard to stay upright, and a bit after that Link even manages to stop crying.

They don’t talk about it. But Rhett sits with his arm around Link’s waist, not complaining about Link’s head on his shoulder, until Link’s headache gets to be too much and he extracts himself to get a bottle of water.

By the time Link comes back, Rhett’s put the laundry away. Well, minus the socks, which he’s sorting and matching.

Link laughs when he realizes Rhett’s quietly turning socks right-side out, and Rhett’s sheepish grin from his place on the floor goes a long way towards making Link feel less like he wants to die.

All things considered, one out of three ain’t bad.

–

They don’t talk about it, but the next time Link does laundry there’s no panties to get emotional over. He’s grateful for it. Some part of him feels bad that Rhett’s not able to wear what he wants because of Link’s baggage, but the rest of him is busy reconstructing his man suit to get through the day.

Junior year becomes senior year becomes their parents taking them to lunch over Spring Break and asking where they’re thinking of working. Rhett goes completely fucking crazy when he says, without warning Link to duck and cover or in fact telling Link  _anything at all:_  "There’s a water plant being built in San Francisco I applied to that's willing to move me out there once I graduate. They’re offering enough for me to be able to get a house with Link, easy.”

He takes a bite of his burger after he says it, like he hasn’t just announced to God and everyone that he’s a leather pants and glitter wearing homosexual. Which he hasn’t said, of course, but Link can see in Mr. McLaughlin’s eyes that’s loosely what was understood. Link looks to his own mother, who’s blinking at him accusatorily:  _Why didn’t you tell me you and Rhett were in love?_  her expression seems to ask.  _Were you going to get married without even inviting me?_

Link feels sick, but he shoves a handful of subpar chain restaurant fries in his mouth anyways, purely to save himself from telling her that they’re  _not,_  they’ve never. He refrains from burying his elbow in Rhett’s ribs because his anxious mind is telling him that’s going to make them look  _more_  involved.

Link used to think that he could spend days looking at Applebee’s cramped and whimsically decorated walls. He barely manages thirty seconds before his eyes are drawn like magnets back to Mr. McLaughlin. There’s this unavoidable survival instinct, see, to want to face the person who’s about to punch you.

But Rhett’s parents are, in fact, looking between Rhett and Link with something like resignation. It’s Momma Di who smiles first.

"Well,” she says. “I’m happy for you boys.” She turns to Link’s mom with that sunny smile and goes on in the same breath: “Did you plant your rose bushes yet? I don’t think it’s going to frost again.”

Link blinks down at his grilled cheese. Rhett goes on eating beside him.

Well. They’d come out to their parents, and they weren’t even dating. What a world. It’d even gone surprisingly well, if you don’t count the rib-cracking hug Link gets from his mother back at the apartment, the tearful,  _I’ll love you no matter what, baby,_  that threatens to undo him entirely.

Rhett gets a hug from Link’s mom, too, and both of them are wrapped up by Momma Di in one go. Mr. McLaughlin shakes their hands without a smile, but Link can’t detect any malice in it, and that's pretty much what he's been doing since they hit puberty.

And then Rhett ushers Link inside, guides him to the sofa, and asks if he wants to order a pizza. The tension of the situation bubbles up in a shrill, “We just ate, dude,” then, “what the  _crap?”_

Rhett starts laughing and then just doesn’t stop, face scrunched up and red and hand on his chest, head thrown back. Link wants to punch him. Link, with a sudden certainty that takes his breath away, realizes he wants to kiss him. He stays firmly on the sofa because he thinks he might fall over if he tries to stand up - that’s how freaking sideways the world is right now.

“You should have seen your face, oh.” There’s tears in Rhett’s eyes as he reaches into the general detritus of board games and junk mail under the coffee table and, suddenly, paper in his hands. He’s still laughing as he flops next to Link on Mr. Fly, proffering the thick manila folder Link’s never seen before.

“What’s this?” Link asks, aiming for still kind of pissed but landing somewhere just shy of breathless. Rhett has the decency to look nervous.

“I’ve been doing some research,” he admits. It’s not a love confession like Link was afraid of (hoping for?) but as Link flips open the file he’s still just as taken aback. “Most of the physicians who’ll prescribe stuff are in San Fran, at least the ones who can do it safely according to all the people I’ve sent letters to, and there’s a couple of - uh, plastic surgeons as well, if… y’know, that’s something you wanted to do.”

Link’s fairly certain Rhett keeps talking, but he can only focus on one thing at once and right now he’s looking at a pile of pamphlets that puts his childhood collection to shame. Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, Nancy Jean Burkholder. Names Link doesn’t know, but under titles that make his toes curl. There’s a common theme.

“These are all about, uh,” Link swallows down the only word he’s ever known, replaces it with the one he keeps reading, “tran-transgender. Women.”

Rhett’s a steady, easy weight beside him, close enough that Link feels when he shrugs.

“Well, yeah.”

It’s such a simple acceptance of something Link’s never been able to come to terms with that Link’s eyes sting. He shuffles the papers around, tries to neaten them to soothe his frayed nerves, and finds that there’s a folded letter in back. Rhett clears his throat slightly beside Link, and Link braces himself as he opens it.

It’s a job offer. San Francisco. Rhett hadn’t been lying when he’d said they’d offered to shoulder the fee of moving across the country, and the starting salary - good gosh.

“I thought,” Rhett starts, pauses. “If you wanted to come with me, I’d like that. The other stuff, that’s just - I don’t know, it’s just why I started looking into jobs out there, but I don't…” He laughs; Link’s relieved that he sounds almost as frazzled as Link feels. “It’s your choice. I don’t care, either way.”

“You - ” Link forces himself to look up at Rhett, who’s much closer than Link was anticipating. “You just told our parents we were eloping - ”

“Oh, come on, they assumed - ”

“ - and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter? If I - become a woman or not?”

Rhett blinks at the challenge in Link’s tone, seems to think it over.

“Well, no,” he says, finally. “You’re always gonna be Link. Or - well, whatever name you come up with. You’re the same person no matter what you do.”

Link stares at Rhett, overwhelmed, and Rhett stares back. Adds, as Link is working himself up to ask: “And I love you.”

Link would like to say that he puts the folder down carefully as to not scatter things everywhere. That he takes his time making sure Rhett means what Link think he did.

The papers flung across the living room and the bruise on the back of Rhett’s head from Link’s enthusiasm say otherwise, however.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at egocentrifuge dot tumblr dot com for all the drabbles i'm too lazy to transfer over. also more trans content. 
> 
> i'm going to make mythical entertainment as a tag happen. it's the new fetch.


End file.
